10 Actors Whose Movie Character Requests Got Rejected
Colin Farrell "fought valiantly" to have The Penguin chomp down on some cigars.
Filmmaking is an undeniably collaborative process in which directors must work with writers, producers, and hundreds of other crew members in the hope of delivering a quality end product.
But perhaps no relationship is more immediately important than that between a filmmaker and their cast. If the director and one of their actors - or, God forbid, multiple actors - aren't on the same page, it can spell disaster before even a single frame of film has been shot.
There's a sure push-and-pull between directors and actors, where they will ideally meet in the middle and form a compromise on their visions for the project.
And so despite most often being the face of their movie, actors can't win it all. They have to deal with the fact that some of their enthusiastic suggestions are going to be shot down - perhaps bluntly and brutally - by the director or producer.
That was ultimately the case with these 10 actors, each of whom made passionate suggestions while shooting some of their biggest movies - suggestions which were either ignored or actively rejected, for better or worse...
10. David Harbour Wanted To Speak Only In Russian - Black Widow
David Harbour gave a thoroughly entertaining performance in Black Widow as Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena's (Florence Pugh) father figure Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian.
Harbour sports a Russian accent for the role of the Russian super-soldier, though during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live the actor confessed that he asked Marvel's higher-ups if he could play the part entirely in Russian.
This being a big-budget blockbuster that they wanted to sell around the world, though, they flatly shot down his request. Harbour said:
"It makes no sense... So he's Russian. In Russia. He'd be speaking Russian. So the entire movie should be me speaking Russian with subtitles...[But] it's not the best look for a Marvel movie, like a PG-13 movie, you just reading subtitles the entire movie... Yeah, [the idea] was not well-received by the producers when I brought that up."
As neat as this would've been, the popcorn-munching masses aren't exactly known for their love of subtitles, so you can appreciate why Marvel played it safe and didn't go this route.